There is a good reason that all books are printed with black ink on white paper. When drafting your resume, use an easily readable font, such as Arial or similar font, and black color. Fancy fonts, such as script, and colors such as pink, light blue. Orange, red etc., are hard to read, can detract from the substance of your resume and hurt your chances of your resume ever being read, much less you being hired. Also, be sure to use white or off white good quality paper to give your document a professional look.

“You only get one chance to make a good first impression!” You can’t redo it, so put your energy into the front end of this deal. Read about the Reasons Employers Want to Hire You. (help aid 19B, page 67) Also, check out some of the InterviewDeal Breakers that can spoil your candidacy. (help aid 19C, page 68) in my book.

The most important information to an employer is who you are, where you’ve worked, what you’ve done and how you and your skills would benefit their company. Everything else is irrelevant conversation and should be avoided.

Employers don’t hire skills, they hire people with skills, and tend to feel that aside from having the basic job qualifications, the most important characteristics they look for in a job applicant are:

Unfortunately you can’t show these qualities very well in an on-line application, so it is definitely worth the effort to get yourself face to face with a potential employer. I address how to go about accomplishing this inthe section on Networking in my book. Networking has become a much more vital and important aspect of job hunting in recent times. A casual, unplanned approach no longer works like it used to.

In an interview situation, the most important idea is to project confidence and professionalism. If you feel yourself becoming nervous about the upcoming interview, be aware that this is normal. It will help you if you can practice in front of a mirror. Even better, get yourself on video being interviewed by a stranger or friend. Feed your interviewer some of the questions right from help aid 20 in my book and see how well you handle them. You will be amazed what changes you may want to make in your own verbal and non-verbal communication when you see yourself on tape. Many people have little habits that distract from the subject at hand, such as continually brushing a lock of hair away from your eyes or the overuse of words like “you know” and “like” and “umm” etc. Seeing it and hearing it yourself is far more powerful and instructive than having someone just tell you about such things.